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Nicola McDonagh

Glimmer and other stories

Synopsis

Glimmer is a collection of seven compelling and darkly humorous stories that deal with obsession, loss, redemption and hope.
In these tales of mysterious liaisons, supernatural intrigue, deathly hauntings and disturbing fixations, characters reveal hidden secrets, forbidden urges, untold yearnings and skills in necromancy.
'I was found in a plastic bag inside a dustbin. Dried blood and faeces stuck to my newborn flesh. Dumped by some teenage girl, too scared to say that she had given birth to a premature baby. Or so the story goes. It’s a pack of lies of course. I fell from the sky.'
Rousseau’s Suburban Jungle takes us into the world of Esther, who loses herself in the wild and colourful paintings of Henri Rousseau to escape the blandness of her existence. In The Reclaimed Merman a suicidal man is saved from a watery grave after he meets an eccentric woman on the beach. When the legendary artist Earnest Thirk dies, a grieving fan decides to honour his secret last wish. And in the Award Winning tale Glimmer, a young man reflects upon his life as he waits for messages from the stars.

Author Biography

Nicola J McDonagh is a creative writing tutor and photographer. Born in Liverpool she now lives in a 17th Century timber framed cottage with her musician husband and rescue cats. She loves to grow, cook and eat her own vegetables and fruit.
Nicola trained as a photojournalist and gained an Hons Degree in Drama and English Literature. She also has a Diploma in Creative Writing. Nicola used to be an actor and scriptwriter, and can know call herself a published author.
She won the Suffolk Book League’s Short Story Competition, and was short-listed for the Escalator Genre Fiction Competition with an extract from Echoes from the Lost Ones. The book was published by Fable Press July 2013 and is receiving excellent reviews. The sequel, A Silence Heard, was published 2014.
Nicola has also self-published a collection of short stories, Glimmer and other stories.

Author Insight

Scarecrow

This is a story of a young girl trying to escape from an unknown threat. The girl runs through fields in a torn and blood stained party dress. She stumbles upon a run down cottage and thinks she has found a haven when the old man invites her to stay.

Book Excerpt

Glimmer and other stories

The child didn’t notice the gash on her shin, or the cut on her left cheek. All she wanted to do was to find somewhere to hide. She wiped some spattered mud from her face and continued to push her way through a thorny hedge that tugged at her clothes and left her body covered in scratches. When she emerged from the spikey bushes her brown hair was covered in leaves, seedpods and dirt. Shreds of pink nylon hung down from her torn dress, and her white satin shoes were ragged. But the child didn’t seem to care. She caught her breath and ran through the sodden, rutted fields.

Stumbling and falling, she headed towards a low privet hedge at the end of an overgrown meadow.

Behind a picket fence the girl saw a house half hidden behind two large fir trees. The garden was overgrown and the lawn strewn with rusty barrels, ripped tarpaulins and dented oil drums. She climbed over the fence, looked around, and spied a dilapidated outbuilding a few feet away with a large stack of wood propped up against it. The girl ran towards the building and ducked down behind a water butt attached to a cracked drainpipe.

When her breathing slowed and the pounding in her chest eased, she tilted her head to one side and listened. A strange shuffling sound like someone brushing up dead leaves made the girl hold her breath. It was not leaves though, but footsteps heading her way. They stopped and she sucked her stomach in. Almost blue from lack of oxygen, the girl opened her mouth and let the held-in air out. A loud growling sound made her stiffen and she saw a dog’s snout push its way between the butt and the wall. Its breath was hot and smelled of day old meat. The girl grimaced, squeezed herself further in between the brick wall and piles of seasoned timber, pressed her back against cold stone and slid noiselessly to the ground.